How long does it take to improve your gut microbiome?
You're doing all the gut health ‘things’, but how long will it take for your microbiome to change?
Your first major dose of microbes happens at birth. As you traverse through and out your mother’s birth canal you’re smothered in fluid that transfers some of your mother’s microbiome to you. For babies born by cesarean, their first major dose of microbes comes from the skin microbiome of their parents, doctors, and nurses as well as from the hospital environment. As a baby, your microbiome rapidly fluctuates up and down with low bacterial diversity, and shifting between different types of bacteria present.
Babies love to touch and taste everything from floor to toy to human to pet. In this way, new microbes are constantly introduced into their developing gut. Breast milk also seeds and nurtures the microbiome. Rapid changes happen again with the introduction of food solids linked to changes in gut microbiome composition.
This rapidly shifting microbiome starts to settle down into an adult-like microbiome around the age of 3. This is when your microbiome is more resistant to change, acting as a safety mechanism, with your gut microbiome more likely to bounce back after a bout of food poisoning for example.
There are many factors that influence your microbiome. Some are outside of our control or simply inconvenient - like getting a pet when you don’t like dogs, or moving to the countryside when you work in the city.
The biggest modifiable contributor to your microbiome though, is what you eat. With your microbiome living in your lower intestine, what you eat directly feeds your gut bacteria encouraging some to flourish more than others. Plant foods like fruit, veg, whole grains, beans, legumes, nuts, and seeds all contain different types of fibre that acts like rocket fuel for our gut bacteria. You can read more here about how to improve your gut microbiome.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear-cut answer. Yet. Hopefully, with microbiome science rapidly evolving we may have more specific answers sooner rather than later.
Based on the data we have now, it likely takes a matter of weeks and months, rather than days, to make a significant change to your gut microbiome.
Certain species can rapidly shift and change within 1-3 days, though some of these changes are thought to be fairly transient. In one study, participants microbiome has returned to it’s previous state three days after the diet intervention was complete. Your core species are more resistant to any changes above day-to-day fluctuations. As I mentioned earlier, it’s resistant to change as a self-defense mechanism. This protective reflex does however make it harder to shift your microbiome for the positive too.
We know though that eating a high-fibre gut-friendly diet can have a startlingly profound change in disease risk, your microbiome, and your metabolism. The only potential negative is that you may end up toot-ing a little more, with your gut bacteria producing gas as a happy waste product when metabolizing fibre.
If you’re interested in a further deep-dive on this, I wrote a paper a few years ago with some colleagues called Effect of diet on the gut microbiota: Rethinking intervention duration.
That’s it for now! If you have a thought percolating from this, I’d love to hear it - drop me a comment below.
Chat soon, Emily xx
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